1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the cellular telecommunications field and, in particular, to an apparatus and method that automatically controls when a low priority page request can be effectively forwarded to a mobile station.
2. Description of Related Art
In the cellular telecommunications field, one of the most significant design challenges involves the development of new ways to improve how and when a cellular system should page a mobile station. The traditional cellular system supports several common applications that use a paging function to page and locate the mobile station which include, for example, voice call applications, data call applications, Short Message Service (SMS) applications and mobile positioning applications. Each of these common applications must use the paging function to locate the mobile station before being able to complete the particular task (e.g., terminating voice/data calls, forwarding SMS messages, determining the mobile station""s location) of that application.
One type of paging function is known as a mobile station probe function which operates to automatically and repeatedly send a low priority page request in an attempt to locate the mobile station. More specifically, the mobile station probe function can repeat (e.g., every ten minutes) the initiation of a low priority page request in an attempt to locate a mobile station that has been switched-off or has been located in a geographic area that does not have radio coverage (for example). Of course, the mobile station must respond to the low priority page request before the application can complete their particular task.
The mobile station probe function is often associated with low priority applications such as, for example, the mobile positioning application and the SMS application. Generally, the low priority applications do not require that the mobile station be immediately located in order to complete their particular task. In contrast, the high priority applications such as, for example, the voice call application and the data call application typically require that the mobile station be immediately located in order to complete their particular task. Thus, the high priority applications seldom use the mobile station probe function.
The problem with traditional paging schemes is that they automatically and repeatedly send low priority page requests to a mobile station regardless of the current paging load and/or the current traffic load within the cellular system which can create an unnecessary load on a processor and air interface resources (e.g., paging channels (PCH) and single cell signaling control channel (SCCH). Therefore, there is a need for an apparatus and method capable of determining when low priority page requests can be effectively forwarded to a mobile station in order to decrease a load on a processor and air interface resources.
The present invention is an apparatus and method that can effectively improve the paging scheme of a traditional cellular system. Basically, the apparatus includes a controller (cell load monitor) which operates to determine when a paging distribution handler should forward a low priority page request to a mobile station in order to decrease a processing (blind) load on a processor. The controller utilizes a current paging load (first embodiment) and/or a current traffic load (second embodiment) as a factor to help determine when the low priority page request should be forwarded to the mobile station.